Anti-Displacement Strategy and Equitable Community Engagement

The City of Alexandria, Virginia, recently completed a small-area plan in Alexandria West. This geographically large neighborhood encompasses 13 percent of the city’s land area, 17 percent of the its population — including a large number of immigrants and a substantial portion of Alexandria’s essential workforce — and nearly 40 percent of its market affordable housing.

The city grappled with big questions, including how to:

• retrofit suburbia;

• engage a diverse, multilingual community;

• empower community members to participate in planning for their future;

• develop strategies and resources to minimize resident displacement; and

• balance economic pressures and the need to increase housing supply.

To address these issues, planners integrated their housing affordability and land use strategies, prioritizing growth in areas where development will not result in resident displacement. They evaluated the economic impacts of new development on existing housing affordability and focused on creating open space, ensuring sustainability, and incentivizing land uses that will support the neighborhood.

The city has prioritized community engagement throughout the planning process, using grant funding to partner with and extend the reach of community organizations and leaders, offering language interpretation and translation in six languages, and maintaining its presence in the neighborhood through traditional and new tactics.